Congratulations, you're almost to the halfway point of the course. You should be excited about the way you've committed yourself to the practices associated with Modules 1 and 2. I hope you've had at least a few personal experiences that have shown you the potential that mindfulness has to enhance your life. But if for some reason you haven't tried any of the activity challenges or listened to any of the guided meditations that we've included, I strongly encourage you to begin to do so. I think it's really easy to fall into the trap of intellectualizing this material. There's some really interesting concepts and principles associated with it. But if what you're doing is thinking about mindfulness rather than practicing it, your relationship to mindfulness won't be a deep one and you'll miss out on the many gifts that it can bring to your life. It can definitely be hard at first both to find the time and to give yourself permission to spend time in this way, but I promise the work you put in, the discipline this practice requires of us, and the sacrifices that you might have to make to find time for it, are truly worthwhile. In the last Module, we focused on the mind-body connection and you're given some exercises designed to help you focus on, and get to know your body a little bit. Well, as you now know, mindfulness of the body is the first foundation of mindfulness because our bodies are so integral to all of experience. When we pay attention, we can see how much life and energy flows through the body, electrifying us from the inside out, guiding us into behavior, and reflecting our inner state of being. And for example, maybe at some point this week you felt tender towards and connected to someone that you care about. If you were paying attention to what was happening in your body, you might have noticed a softening around the eyes and in the chest and a desire to be close or make physical contact with that individual. This basic drive for affiliation and connection which is innate in all of us becomes, or at least can become apparent to us first and most directly in the body. And this is true for any experience we have that has an emotional quality to it, which is pretty much every experience. But if that surprises you, what I just said about most experiences being saturated with feelings, don't be too alarmed. Many physical sensations are easy to miss and some even lie under the radar of normal conscious perception. But when we bring a quality of gentle mindfulness to the body, these sensory experiences that sometimes feel vague can begin to show themselves with greater clarity and presence. A great benefit of this practice is the way it helps to bring sensations, emotions, and habituated thinking patterns up to the level of conscious attention. Having these elements rise up into consciousness helps set the stage for increased self-awareness on our part and gives us the ability to evolve mental habits or behaviors that aren't really working for us. After all, we can't change what we can't see. And that's where we're headed in this Module. We're going to keep the lens of attention on our internal experience and begin to look more deeply at our emotional lives and the patterns of thinking that sustain them. As we peel back some layers here, I think you'll see that physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts are deeply intertwined. And while these aspects of ourselves are independent, each influence the other and work together to create our perceived reality. But it's important to remember that you're not a victim of these forces. Bringing awareness to our emotions and getting to know the conditioned mind are crucial first steps that help us shift away from patterns and habits that don't serve our well-being. The lectures and activities included in this Module will help give you a sense of your emotional comfort zones, and you'll learn which emotions are easy for you to be with and which emotions you tend to avoid or reject. They'll also help you uncover some of the habitual thinking patterns that may be creating dysfunction in your life. For example, maybe you tend to catastrophize when something in life doesn't go your way or perhaps it's like you to take all the blame for any and all conflict that arises in your life, even when it's not your fault. By the time this Module ends, I think you'll see just how gifted we all are at getting in our own way, but you'll also see options for relating to your internal experiences differently and you'll have some new tools and resources to help you live with greater balance and ease.
